In my opinion, Brexit, any Brexit, could spell economic, political and social disaster for the UK. Brexit could ensure the demise of the Good Friday Agreement, with seriously damaging consequences. It could see the independence of Scotland – not necessarily a bad thing for Scotland, but yet another unintended consequence of Brexit. And, it could significantly deteriorate the rights and conditions of workers in the UK.

So, I wish to put a Brexit question to Jeremy Corbyn.

Will the working people in the UK be better off if the UK leaves the European Union?

When you offer people all of the benefits of the single market and the customs union, but without any of the EU bureaucracy, constraints and costs, what happens?

We ran an experimental consultation last year in the UK just to demonstrate what happens when bat-shit-crazy mad-cow Britain has a chance to throw a spanner in the works. Some people will inevitably believe the boloney whilst others will use it as a mere tool in a simple-minded and obtuse attempt to rationalise their own irrationality and misanthropy. Nobody can throw a spanner in the works quite like the Brits.

The prevailing conventional wisdom is that innovative technologies and their novel use are having an effect on many peoples’ lives. Indeed, the fascination with the possibilities offered by social media, the internet and the age of data is becoming all pervasive. Of course, not all is goodness and light. Some aspects, such as Denial of Service attacks, phishing without a permit and creatively-ambiguous chimping, mark the down side of this story. Continue reading →

US liberals still don’t get it, do they? I was particularly unimpressed by The Guardian’s US correspondent, Richard Wolffe, who wrote this of Trump “He is the very man Hillary Clinton warned us that he would be.”

Like as if we really need the advice of an entitled and arrogant warmonger about any other unhinged member of the globalised political circus. Continue reading →

Will Brexit result, as I read on Twitter, in the UK “taking back what we never lost to lose everything we currently have.”?

My concern is about what could happen to the people in the UK when we have finally run-away from Europe.

With Brussels gone, with the EU and the Single Market gone, with our EU citizenship ripped from our cold dead hands, who will Brexiteers have to complain about once we have become an isolated, tiny and populous ex-colonialist island to the east of New Jersey?

They told us that Brexit would mean control over sovereignty and immigration. Which would mean total control over the economy, culture, society, law making, international relationships and trade.

They told us that voting for Brexit was the only patriotic option on offer.

This is what the backers of Brexit, through media, political and celebrity bullshitting agents, and a plethora of Brexit’s useful idiots, were telling us we would get once we were out of the EU. Continue reading →

Like him or loath him, the fact of the matter is that the 45th President of the USA is Donald Trump.

Many see him as a blow-dried extrovert who can close big business deals and get the important jobs done. Others see him as an uncouth, ignorant and potty-mouthed bully, totally unfit for any public office – even that of dog-catcher.

He may have lots of detractors both sides of the beltway, but Donald Trump, who has been compared favourably with Andrew Jackson, has retained considerable support, especially in the rustbelt and coal mining communities.